HERBAL MEDICINE - A HOAX ?

Lionel from Darien, Illinois, asks:
Doc, you advised me about a herbal blend from the Rainforest for diabetes. I asked my healthcare provider about and he stopped me to prescribe Metformin instead. How do you see that?
 
Dr. Fritz:

Metformin is indeed the most prescribed diabetes drug in the nation. Besides of the fact that it has, by far,  not 'solved' the diabetes epidemic in this country (and beyond), it comes with no less but 69 side effects, all listed by its producer, the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb, on its Product Information list. 

Even worse in your, and similar cases:

According to a recent survey on Herbal Medicine by the Drug and Therapeutic Bulletin (DTB) exclusively with more than 1,000 participants (80% doctors - most of them family doctors - and 20% pharmacists) shows a dramatic result. 

Not only did 9 out of 10 survey participants admit that their knowledge of herbal medicine was "much poorer" than their knowledge about prescription drugs. 85% of them also believe that the public is "poorly informed" anyhow.

Accordingly, the conclusion of the survey, officially:
"Doctors are poorly informed about herbal medicines as they think their patients are."

Although it is just a little bit more than 100 years (a blink of the eye in human history...) that our ancestors lived their full life expectancy - healthy - on herbal medicine. Before pharmaceutical giant Bayer synthesized white willow bark and surrounded it with a man-made chemical formula to patent it by the name of Aspirin in the year of 1900  - birth of our 'modern' medicine.

The lesson is clear: when contacting the natural online doctor for advice who himself is a board-certified doctor of natural medicine, medicinal herbs are playing an important role.

With special reference to the Rainforest (our world's 'biggest natural pharmacy') with thousands of years reputation and scientifically validated by most renowned medical schools (like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, etc.) today. As an example: the U.S. governmental 'Institutes of Health' have knowledge of more than 2,000 (!) Rainforest herbs for cancer treatment.